


Once you learn to read, you will be forever free...

by EWM



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A sad ending, Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Fluff, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Having Secrets, I'm not really sure how to even to tag this, POV Bucky Barnes, Reading as an escape from trauma, Recovery and survival, a tiny bit of whump, bucky likes to read, fluff and comfort, reading as a comfort, references to trauma, this really is just shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 14:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EWM/pseuds/EWM
Summary: This is me tentatively dipping my toe into writing Marvel fanfic (as in my first one like ever)I've also had a long week so I wrote some fluff.I saw the latest trailer for Falcon and Winter Soldier and Bucky mentions he read The Hobbit in 1937 when it first came out. It didn't seem a very Barnes thing so I loved the idea that he was a secret reader.Like I said shameless fluff with a tiny bit of angst and suggested whump
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Once you learn to read, you will be forever free...

Bucky Barnes had always loved reading. It was true in his long and strange life, he hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to do it. When he was still ‘him’ in Brooklyn, reading had been a closely guarded secret. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 20s and 30s; loving books wasn’t going to get you a lot of respect; being able to fight did. Barnes was lucky, although he was not huge, he was wiry and tough. So, the first time someone mocked him for having his nose in a book from the library he dropped it in the mud immediately and tackled the guy to the floor. When the guy grabbed him by his hair and slammed him into a wall, Bucky managed to throw a punch so hard he broke the guy’s nose (he broke three of his own fingers in the process). After that the guy didn’t bug him again and Bucky didn’t read when he was outside anymore either. 

Instead, he read late into the night under his covers, so his parents didn’t know he was using up electricity or candles and costing them more money. He hid the books he got from the library under his bed. It wasn’t that he thought his parents would hate him for it; his mom particularly loved telling him stories, but he knew that neither of them would see the point. He needed to be out earning his living as soon as he finished school, supporting them and helping them. Bucky knew that too, but he couldn’t stop himself, reading was the only time he could be away from everything. Away from being poor, away from being tough, away from his responsibilities, away from all of it.

In school one of his teachers tried to encourage him. They saw how intently he looked at the books on the shelves or how absorbed he was when a passage was read out in class. But when the teacher tried to speak several times after the day was done, Bucky always just stared at the floor. All he could think of was that he’d promised Mom he’d come help after school and he was going to be late and how his dad would just laugh if he asked how many different perspectives were supposed to be in Faulkner’s “As I lay dying”. In the end the teacher gave up because Bucky was always unresponsive and put on a show of not really understanding.

Then there was Steve. Steve would never have judged him for reading. Rogers was never like that, if Bucky was happy, he was happy. But Bucky spent an awful lot of his time looking out for Steve, Rogers always had a way of getting himself into trouble and Barnes had to get him out of it. He never minded that, but in between that and chasing girls, his books remained something private, that he shared with no one, his books were only for him.

And in 39 the war came, everything got put aside for that. He signed up immediately and tried to stop Steve getting himself into trouble. Even Bucky knew that he couldn’t protect him across the whole of Europe. Of course, Steve ignored him and they ended up fighting th Nazis together. Books kept him alive when he was captured by Hydra for the first time; as he recited his name and his rank and his division on repeat, his mind ran away to books; the Hobbit, the bits of Faulkner he could remember, he even tried to recall the one Agatha Christie novel he had read and didn’t really get.

The second time he was captured, when he woke in the snow and the ice with his left arm missing and blood pouring out of him. His mind was a mess, he tried to fight their control, but couldn’t. His memories, his whole life was ripped from him and poisonous blackness was all that remained. Whenever he was put back on ice; little remnants would re-surface, Steve laughing and joking with him, the first time he kissed a girl and the first time he went into a library and picked up a book. Quotes sometimes came into his head, he could never recall where or when he’d read them, but they always floated somewhere in his brain.

When he found himself again thanks to Steve and T’Challa books returned to him again. In Wakanda they gave him access to their vast library so he spent hours reading about the history of the people who had saved his life. He learnt more about telling stories too there, he would shyly ask the scholars about some particular aspect of a text and would get a detailed explanation, he learnt that some of the best stories were told through the generations rather than written down. It was one of the many reasons that Wakanda gave him a sense of peace and he was always grateful to T’Challa for that.

Before Steve went back into the past, after all the death and destruction, he spoke to Bucky. He knew what was coming, he knew that Peggy was calling to him and that he had to go back. Barnes wasn’t surprised, he was just sad. Steve never really belonged in the now, he wanted home and family and Bucky wasn’t that for him, not anymore. He belonged with Peggy Carter, Bucky knew that from the moment they’d clapped eyes on each other. After a long speech and a night spent talking, Rogers got up and Bucky saw him to the door of his tiny room in the Avengers compound, Steve pushed a first addition of Steinbeck’s ‘Canary Row’ into Bucky’s hand.

“Promise me you won’t read this one by candlelight Buck.”

Barnes stared at the beautiful leather book, speechless. He hugged him tight and it was done. Later he watched as Steve went back and then came back, still himself, but now old and content with a life lived. He watched as Wilson was presented with the shield. 

He left the States after that. He took six books with him including Steve’s. He read them on the ship’s he worked, in the harbours he came to port, he read them in the sunlight or the sand or with the sound of the waves in his ears, he read other things too, different languages as many as he could learn. People were always happy to oblige him with a new book, to make the sad man with the blue eyes smile. 

But now he is back in the US, there is a new enemy, he has a new partner, ‘a co-worker’, a new fight. Now he has put his books away again, only to be read in the dark or by candle light.


End file.
